Emission Impossible: Gino D'Acampo and Fred Sirieix travel Austria and Croatia in attempt to be greener

“We love travelling and we decided to go to Austria and Croatia and in doing so we wanted to explore the possibility of travelling as green as we could,” says Fred.

“We were intending to travel as sustainably as we could, exploring the issue of sustainability and how global warming is affecting the planet and how it's going to affect the way we travel and the way we eat.

"Along the way we meet all sorts of people, whether they are involved in the climate change business or not. It's just us travelling around these two countries.”

They start their journey in the Zillertal Alps in Western Austria, surrounded by beautiful but tragically melting glaciers.

Despite Austrian beef being some of the most sustainable in the world, one of the biggest factors of climate change is the production of meat. In the shadow of the melting glacier they give vegetarian goulash a go and Gino declares himself a convert, vowing to start ‘meat free Mondays’ across his restaurants.

After rowing through the Hinterlux glacier (over four kilometres wide and almost three times the size of Monaco) they try their hand at serving beer and dancing the Schuplatter, a traditional folk dance, at The Tiroler Abende in Innsbruk.

Moving on to the Capital Vienna, their quest to find alternative food goes via a 3D printer and ends with some innovative culinary options at a snail farm. 

“To eat 3D printed salmon, I did find it difficult to compute,” Fred admits. “Now, of course we could use insects which in terms of carbon footprint is negligible compared to beef. To go there, you have to challenge your culture and where you come from and what you consider acceptable.

"If you go to Thailand, for example, there are markets where there's just insects and people eat them. They've been eating them for generations and generations.

As the population is shooting up across the world and you need to feed everybody on the planet, then we're going to have to make choices here.

"I think what will force us is necessity. Necessity will force us. We will be in front of a wall and there will be nowhere to go, we will have to change then.”

Heading to Croatia for the second episode, Gino and Fred are shocked by the ‘over-tourism’ in holiday hotspot and UNESCO World Heritage site, Dubrovnik.

Moving from the main old town to the Gruz harbor, they set off on a green safari, which sees Fred pop on the marigolds for a clean-up mission.

As they continue their journey as ‘conscientious travellers’ they head out of the city to Mali Ston, a bay with world renowned shellfish, water polo and lagoon stored wine.

"Croatia is more like an Italian holiday because you got the sun, you got the sea, they're more relaxed,” Gino reflects. “Although they blame the Italian people for all the rubbish washing up on their beaches.”

“Yeah. All the plastic that's being thrown in the sea - the currents are just taking this plastic onto the Croatian coast,” Fred explains. “In Croatia we met this woman who was doing this green safari, you go on the boat and basically, she takes you to an island and she shows you the disaster.”

"It’s covered in rubbish,” Gino adds. “Guys, we went onto islands covered with plastic.”

The idea behind the trip, he says, was to understand is it difficult to be environmentally friendly?

“Or is it something easy that we could all do?” he muses. "I think that was the main thing because whenever you hear about being environmentally friendly, everybody thinks, ‘Oh, no, I'm going to have to walk everywhere, bike everywhere.’

"We wanted to also see what kind of infrastructures we have in place at the moment to be as green as possible…We went to Croatia and Austria to try to pick up tips so then we can bring them here in the UK and say, ‘Look guys, we tried this and it really works’.”

Both episodes of Gino and Fred: Emission Impossible are available on ITVX.